How a Strong Brand Keeps You Productive
You ever feel like every time you try to sit down and get to work on your business, you just keep getting torn in fifteen directions?
You want to do this one cool thing, and you think it would be great, if you just knew how to name it in a way that sounds as cool as it is.
But! You want to also do this other cool thing, that’s nothing like anything you’ve done before, but you haven’t figured out how to make it work with these other things that you do…but you’re not worried about that because you know it’ll just come to you.
And, of course, there’s that other ongoing project that you haven’t quite finished yet—the one that’s going to be your true money-maker—but you’re letting that marinate because you really want to get that one right.
You’ve got all of these great ideas for your brand, but you and your brand can’t agree on one direction to go in—so that you can just go and finally be productive today!
What’s really happening here is that things aren’t moving forward for you, because you don’t know what your brand is.
Sometimes those blockages that we blame on ourselves (“I’m not focused enough” or “I’m not good enough”) really aren’t what we think they are. Sometimes, by not getting to know our brands, we allow ourselves to get split in fifty-eleven directions. And we get nowhere.
You might not know your brand very well (which would totally explain how you got into this situation in the first place) so you don’t recognize the signs that your brand disagrees with what you’re trying to do.
Example: you’re a designer who offers affordable design services to clients with amateur budgets, right? But, the services you offer, while really affordable, are too sophisticated for your target audience—and therefore really don’t match your brand. Is there really a future for that? You might see it…but your brand doesn’t. And why your brand can’t make that happen for you.
Another example: you’re a wedding photographer but you want to put together a coffee table book of animal pictures that you’ve taken. Your audience knows you for wedding photography—and you want them to keep knowing you for wedding photography. If you’re finding this book difficult to work on, it might be that your brand is resisting your efforts. How exactly is this book going to advance you to your goals? And why would people, who know you to capture the most extravagant day in some people’s lifetimes, look to you for photos of animals? Without that answer, you’ll be stuck.
Your brand might not have a body, but it has a personality and opinions and a mission. If you don’t know these things about your brand, you should expect to struggle when you’re building products or brainstorming new services to offer your potential clients.
Before you spend another two hours staring at blank pages or computer screens (or scrolling Facebook because it’ll “give you ideas”) take a hard look at what you’re trying to create and see if there’s really a place for what you’re trying to do within the brand that you’re trying to develop.
P.S. This worksheet will help you decide if you should even be working on this or not.
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